Talking
Jonathan has been slow to talk. We haven’t determined yet what is causing his speech delays, but his hearing has been tested a number of times and it’s just fine. So in the absence of knowing what the delay is (it could just be him taking his time), we work at getting him to say words.
Whenever he wants some juice, I make him say “Juice!”. If he wants to be picked up, I make him say “up”. Emily helps us all the time with this. This morning she was giving Jonathan a good grilling. Say “Daddy”, say “Mommy”, say “Emily” and on and on. It got to the point the rest of us were starting to roll our eyes. At one point, I piped up and and said, “Say diverticulitis“.
Emily stopped immediately and got a somewhat cross look on her face.
“Daddy, Jonathan can’t say diaperchickenitis. That’s silly.”
She’s right. Diaperchickenitis is silly. If she thinks her old man isn’t going to work “diaperchickenitis” into every conversation he has over the next week or two, she doesn’t know me very well.
October 26th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Reminds me of a story:
One lad born to a loving couple was quiet. Silent even. He wouldn’t say a word. The doctors found that he was alert, smart, and capable of speaking. Still, he didn’t speak. This went on until he came down for breakfast one morning, at the age of 12, to discover his mother had burned the oatmeal. He said, “Mom, the oatmeal is burned.” The lad’s mother, overjoyed at hearing her son speak, said “Freddy, you can talk! Why have you never said anything?” To which the boy replied, “Up until now, everything has been fine.”
-k-
November 30th, 2008 at 6:28 am
[...] hurt all over. It might be diaperchickenitis. It might be busting my butt at work. Or it might be breaking my back at the new [...]